


With Clumsy Hands

by yet_intrepid



Category: The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types
Genre: 5+1 Things, Denethor's A+ Parenting, Gen, Hugs, Hurt No Comfort, Hurt/Comfort, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-11
Updated: 2015-02-11
Packaged: 2018-03-11 15:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3330449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yet_intrepid/pseuds/yet_intrepid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Faramir feels himself sink, for what he has known in his heart is now true before his eyes and waking mind. He stretches out his hand, and the fragment of Boromir’s lost life is placed within it.</i>
</p><p>Five times Faramir got the hugs he needed, and one time he didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	With Clumsy Hands

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thecoffeetragedy (onlyacoffee)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/onlyacoffee/gifts).



His hands are clumsy still and small, but Faramir has bent them to his task. And now, as his mother comes to his nursery after her day’s duties, he is proud. He flies to her, a sheet of paper in his hand.

“Look,” he says. “Mama, look!”

She comes to his level to accept what he hands her: a row of uneven letters, marvelous handiwork from a child of three. Finduilas beams. Boromir had pretended to be incapable of reading well into his fifth year in order to avoid his tutors; Faramir, it seems, will be an easier student.

“That is amazing, Faramir,” she tells him. “You are amazing.”

That shy smile breaks across his face and he throws himself into her arms. She is careful not to crumple the paper as she scoops him up, resting him on her hip.

“You will be a scholar one day,” she says. “Would you like that? To write stories like Mama reads to you now?”

“With letters?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says. “With letters.”

Faramir nods against her neck. “I want to,” he says. “But you’ll still read them to me, Mama, right?”

“Of course, child,” Finduilas says. And she carries him to the windowseat where his favorite book lies, and reads it over again.

\----

They say he cannot see Mama.

Faramir is not sure why that is. He knows only that when he does sneak in to look, she is almost always sleeping. He knows, too, that there are more people around now, different people. They are called the healers, and they are very quiet all the time.

He is very quiet too. Or he tries, anyway. Even Boromir is quieter, now.

But he misses Mama, and sometimes he wants to cry, because he is lonely. Boromir is with his tutors much, much longer than Faramir is with his, and there is no one to play with. No one to read him stories. He can read some of them himself, now, but some days he wants to listen.

Boromir says they’re both growing up. Faramir thinks growing up is rotten, but he does not say it.

But on days when he most hates growing up, he slips down and sits outside Mama’s door. The healers don’t look at him too much, and Faramir is glad of it. He doesn’t want any healer. He wants his mother.

But one day, when growing up seems like the most rotten thing to ever happen, he cries a little, quietly, as he sits on the floor outside her room. And then there are arms around him, but they aren’t Mama’s arms.

He looks up, blinking the blurriness away. The woman hugging him is wrinkly. She is one of the healers.

“Who are you, mistress?” he asks, because even when he is sad he knows he must be polite.

She wipes his face with a soft handkerchief. “My name is Ioreth, little lordling. I was with your mother but I thought, there’s six of us to tend to her and no one for you and that’s not fair, is it? So I came out.”

“I want to go in,” Faramir says.

“Now,” says Ioreth. “Your father the lord steward won’t allow that just now.”

Faramir bites his lip. “Why not?”

“Because your lady mother is very ill.”

“Is that why she needs the healers?”

“Yes.” Ioreth sighs. “But I fear she needs more than we can give. Alas there is no king as there was of old!”

Faramir tilts his head. “What would a king do?”

Ioreth smiles sadly. “The hands of a king are the hands of a healer,” she says. “And so could the rightful king be known.”

“Well then,” asks Faramir, “can’t you be the king? And heal her?”

“It doesn’t work like that, Lord Faramir,” she says. “There’s only one as can be king, and maybe none.”

He hides his face, and she lets him cry.

\----

“Faramir!”

At his father’s sharp tone, Faramir looks up from his plate. “My lord?” he says, because they are at dinner with visiting lords from Lamedon, and ceremony is called for.

Denethor raises his eyebrows. “You have not forgotten, I hope, the purpose of a meal.”

Faramir looks down again at his plate. It is barely touched. “No my lord,” he says, but in truth, he has no appetite. It is always hard to eat at the high table, and he is not sure why. He thinks perhaps it is because he knows how easy it is to displease his father in any action, from the breaking of bread to the greeting of a guest. But failure to partake of what he is given is one act sure to displease, and Faramir curses the rebellion of his stomach.

“Then eat,” Denethor commands. He turns back to the lords gathered around the table. “Your pardon. In years past I blamed Faramir’s contrary nature on grief for his mother’s death, but it is five years since. It is a trouble to me. I take comfort, however, that Boromir has shown no such willfulness.”

And he puts his hand on Boromir’s arm. Faramir turns his face away, raising a glass of water to his lips.

“Aye, but Father,” Boromir is saying, “at his age I had merely the opposite error. I was over-fond of the table!”

“A simple childish fault,” Denethor insists.

Faramir’s faults are never simple, nor are they childish. Ever they are acts of rebellion, and Faramir does not know why.

At last Denethor rises. “If you will, my lords,” he says, “wine awaits us in the library. Faramir, you are dismissed to your chambers.”

Faramir bows, and Boromir, catching his eye, bows as well. “Lord Father,” he says, “I beg your leave. There is work I must finish ere I meet with my tutors come morning.”

Denethor looks from one son to the other, but he grants leave, and the two slip away through the halls. As soon as they have reached Faramir’s chambers and the door is shut behind them, Boromir draws Faramir close. Faramir sighs deeply.

“I do not mean to displease him,” he says. “I swear.”

“I know it,” Boromir says. “I know.”

\----

Faramir has no love of swordplay. Beregond the guard has been set to train him, and he is kind, yet Faramir cannot find anything but discipline in his heart with which to motivate himself to learn. And Beregond, though he is himself a man of discipline, is also a man with a great passion for the sword.

“See,” he says, for the third time, “thus, Faramir.” And Faramir seeks to copy his movements, but his hands are clumsy, and he has not the easy grace of Beregond—much less of Boromir, who is praised by all for his natural talent with a blade.

But Beregond is patient. Time and again he corrects Faramir’s form—“it is easier,” he continues to say, “if you will stand so”—and they labor together. Faramir is sure that Beregond’s task is at least as hard as his own. He wishes to be a good pupil, but he knows himself frustratingly slow.

But Beregond is free with praise for every small improvement, and when at last they withdraw from the sparring grounds, he casts an arm around Faramir’s aching shoulders.

“You will be a fine swordsman one day,” he says. “Doubt it not, my lord.”

Faramir smiles shyly. “I wish that day would come more quickly,” he says. “My father is impatient with my progress—Boromir was advanced far beyond this stage these five years past.”

“If I may say it, Lord Faramir,” Beregond says, “you are not your brother.”

Beregond squeezes his shoulders, and they part ways: Faramir to the archery range, and Beregond homewards.

\----

The Rangers are burning bodies.

Faramir is not a recruit, anymore; the battle just over was far from his first. He has slain orcs, has washed their filth from his hands and spit their black blood from his mouth. But not until today has he killed a man.

He bears a slight wound from the fighting, but the trembles that shudder through him are not from pain. He has not lost near enough blood to explain away the nausea that rises. No, but his spinning thoughts are to blame; the world seems to squeeze itself inside his head. And so he turns this way and that among the chaos of the aftermath, trying to convince himself to help, to act, to do some useful deed.

He cannot.

Instead, ashamed, he retreats, leaning his back against a tree. He tries not to smell the burning, tries to think of something solid and grounded and true. But his grasp comes up empty and his breathing quickens, and he can only think: I have killed. I have killed men. I have ended lives; I have brought grief; I am a bearer of death.

And hatred rises in him. And he thinks, he would rather die himself than spend one more day at war, than draw one more arrow and speed it into flesh. And he cannot breathe, and the smell is cloying around him.

He drops to his knees and heaves up dry.

“Captain Faramir!”

Mablung is approaching, and Damrod behind him. Faramir, still shaking, endeavors to draw himself up. But they kneel beside him, hands on his shoulders, keeping him steady.

“Have you other hurts?” Damrod asks.

Faramir shakes his head.

They look at one another.

Faramir swallows. “A moment,” he whispers. “I will be better in a moment.”

“Of course, Captain,” Mablung reassures him.

But he is not better; he is heaving again, gasping for breath. The thoughts pound in his head: I killed them, I killed them.

“I killed them,” he spits out at last.

“As is your duty,” says Damrod, but Mablung hushes him.

“Your first time,” he says. Asks. “With men.”

“Yes,” says Faramir, and he drops his head.

“It’s no shame,” says Mablung. “No shame.”

And he embraces Faramir like a son, and Faramir breathes at last. And he tells himself: no shame.

\----

“My lord Faramir,” says the soldier in the door of his tent.

Faramir hardly hears him. He sees in his mind again what he saw upon the river: Boromir, wounded. Dead.

“My lord Faramir,” the soldier repeats.

He draws himself from his stupor. “Yes.”

“We have found this.”

The soldier’s clothing is drenched, his hair dripping. He has been in the river, Faramir thinks, and then his eyes fall upon the man’s outstretched hands.

They hold forth Boromir’s horn.

Nay, but not in whole: it is cloven, and this is but half. Faramir feels himself sink, for what he has known in his heart is now true before his eyes and waking mind.

He stretches out his hand, and the fragment of Boromir’s lost life is placed within it.

“Leave me,” he whispers.

The flap of the tent falls shut. With cold and clumsy hands, Faramir clutches the shard of horn to his breast.

There is no king that can heal a wound like this.


End file.
